EN World EN5ider has launched! EN World EN5ider is the new way to get regular gaming articles and adventures online. For a small monthly donation, you will receive rules articles, gaming advice, adventures, and more. Collect EN World EN5ider articles and adventures designed and formatted to be filed in a binder.

I must confess that I've never used a virtual tabletop. I understand that they're very popular, though (Roll20 says it has close to a million users, and it won an ENnie last year). I just got sent a link to a press kit for Roll20's new mobile apps for iOS and Android. The short version is that Roll20 is now...

We've known that Tabletop, the web show hosted by Wil Wheaton, was planning an RPG spinoff show for quite a while now. Yesterday, some more information emerged as the show began production. The cast list was announced, and various set photos were tweeted. The cast includes Wil Wheaton, Hank Green (Vlogbrothers, SciShow), Alison Haislip (Team Unicorn, Attack of the Show),...

Once a month, EN5ider and TRAILseeker share a system-neutral article, usually one dealing with advice for running a great roleplaying game. In Creating Enjoyable Puzzles for Role Playing Games Carl Heyl shows you how to create enjoyable puzzles for your games. It's all too easy to stop a game in...

The back-to-basics series on how to DM continues here with a short entry on balancing the cinematic with a more natural realism. It's presented in a binary fashion, but introduces the whole balancing act of creating a sense of peril within the game. "Among many other things, D&D is a creative balance between DM...

Once a month, EN5ider and TRAILseeker share a system-neutral article, usually one dealing with advice for running a great roleplaying game. In Creating Enjoyable Puzzles for Role Playing Games Carl Heyl shows you how to create enjoyable puzzles for your games. It's all too easy to stop a game in its tracks, or throw off any sense of immersion. The advice in this article gives tips on creating organic, fun puzzles which don't interrupt your game. Illustrated by Sade.

I must confess that I've never used a virtual tabletop. I understand that they're very popular, though (Roll20 says it has close to a million users, and it won an ENnie last year). I just got sent a link to a press kit for Roll20's new mobile apps for iOS and Android. The short version is that Roll20 is now available on Android and iPad. The long version is below, along with a nifty video of the iPad app in use.

The back-to-basics series on how to DM continues here with a short entry on balancing the cinematic with a more natural realism. It's presented in a binary fashion, but introduces the whole balancing act of creating a sense of peril within the game. "Among many other things, D&D is a creative balance between DM and players. After running a number of games, I found that I began to think about what kind of experience my players really want. That process influenced my actions as a DM, and has inspired me to come up with two rough modes for running games, which can help make the overall experience for my players a good one. If youíre a new DM, these modes might help you deliver that fun player experience that all DMs crave."

We've known that Tabletop, the web show hosted by Wil Wheaton, was planning an RPG spinoff show for quite a while now. Yesterday, some more information emerged as the show began production. The cast list was announced, and various set photos were tweeted. The cast includes Wil Wheaton, Hank Green (Vlogbrothers, SciShow), Alison Haislip (Team Unicorn, Attack of the Show), Yuri Lowenthal (Naruto, Dragon Age, Ben 10), and Laura Bailey (Soul Eater, Dragon Ball Z, Final Fantasy XIII).

Currently trending at 92%, Princes of the Apocalypse was released on Friday in many game stores around the world. Do you have it? What do you think of it? The adventure is now available for rating and comments in EN World's reviews system! Take a moment to rate it and let us know your impressions!

Dungeons & Drafts is "a tavern for geeks and gamers coming Spring 2015 to Fort Collins, Co." While that's probably not of much use to 99.999999% of people reading this, it's still something fun to read about. It's raising funds on Kickstarter (funded very quickly, and now approaching $60K). "For too long geeks have had to endure noisy sports bars and venues without readily accessible polyhedral dice just to have a drink with friends. Well, no more! Dungeons & Drafts is here to provide geeks from all walks of life with a welcoming place to call their own, kick back with a pint, and play a game with friends."

Not entirely by design, I ended up picking a lot of Pathfinder stuff this week. There's also a great Lovecraftian game that ties into the OSR-driven Stars Without Numbers game system and a pretty interesting ICONS campaign setting. Onward!

What do animal companions, herbalism, chases, and druidic circles have in common? They have all been subjects of gorgeous articles on EN World EN5ider in the last couple of weeks, adding to the existing battlefield events, archery contests, campaign lessons, cherished trinkets, and 11-page adventure already there. EN5ider patrons have gotten 9 fantastic articles, some of them for free! Seriously, if you're not a patron, you're missing out. Over 400 people are aready patrons!

Mike Schley's maps for Princes of the Apocalypse, which were previously released and then unreleased, have now been rereleased. Mike is the cartographer from the adventure, which is out today in preferred stores, and you can purchase prints of each of the maps directly from him. He has posted 13 maps in total, including regional, village, and interior maps of various locations. Click on any below for his gallery and store and, if you can, pick up a print to support the artist!

The other day I reported on a law being passed in Indiana, USA. There was a long thread about it, which was mainly very civil up until the last few hours; so I won't be opening this one to comments as it seems the civility reservoir on this topic has been run dry. But I figured some folks might like an update on what happened. The law was passed despite the protestation. Various large businesses have now said they will be leaving Indiana. Gen Con (the business relevant to us gamers) has written a letter to its attendees (us), which you can see below. The letter confirms that Gen Con is contractually obliged to remain in Indy for the next five years, and that bidding for its business is a long process which takes years, and which starts right about now, but encourages attendees to still come to Indy in the meantime.

Charles Akins, who sometimes writes guest articles right here at EN World, has created a PDF compiling the entirelty of the Dungeons & Drunkards series. It's a free, 26-page comedic PDF compiling the articles written by himself, Sean Bircher, Stelios V. Perdios, and Jens D, all of which are alcohol and D&D themed. For example, A Pub Crawl Through Assorted Editions of D&D is "a collection of rules and ideas about the sim ulated fictional consumption of alcoholic beverages in D&D through space and time", and Boozing It Up in 5E is... well, you get the idea! There's some fiction, some discussion of drunken DMs, a drunken beast called the Cellar Rat, stats for Futurama's Bender as a Modron, and more.

Check out this piece of preview art from the recently launched Giantslayer adventure path from Paizo Publishing. The art piece is by Johan Grenier. Giantslayer launched last month with Battle of Bloodmarch Hill.

If you've ever wondered how D&D miniatures are made, iO9's Ed Grabianowsi has the answer for you. Gale Force 9 has given iO9 an insight into the miniature creation process as part of the Princes of the Apoclaypse publicity effort. The article interviews GF9's Matt Parks and discusses the Elemental Evil miniatures to be released over the coming months - in particular the model of Aerisi Kalinoth, who features on the cover of Princes of the Apocalypse.

EN World member Brian Michaluk is the second person out of the gate with a review of Princes of the Apolocalyse, the upcoing D&D 5th Edition hardback adventure. He says it's much better than the previous three adventures (by which he means Lost Mine of Phandelver, which I thought was rather good, Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat). His review follows Fildrigar's last week.

Ten years ago today, Doctor Who returned to the BBC after a long hiatus. Since 2009, Cubicl 7 has been producing the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space roleplaying game (which has one of my favourite initiative systems: talkers go first, then doers, then runners, then fighters; or something very similar to that - I may have a couple transposed!) They're written a short post looking back, which you'll find below!

New for En5ider patrons! There are many types of druid in fiction and film with widely differing specializations. This article explores three new Druid Circles to help bring variety to your game table. Explore the Circle of Birds and Beasts (command and control of natural creatures), the Circle of the Elements (controlling elements and elementals), and the Circle of Life (healing the living and purifying the land). By Mark Kernow, and illustrated by Deanna Roberds.

Paizo's RPG Superstar competition ended on Tuesday, and the winner was Monica Marlowe. Her winning adventure pitch, Down the Blighted Path, will be released in January 2016. RPG Superstar required contenstants to design material for the Pathfinder RPG - a wondrous item, a map, a monster, an encounter, and then an adventure pitch.

This one's for the TRAILseeker patrons! This adventure is a bonus as a thank you for getting us to 60 patrons - patrons are NOT being charged for it (and we know that some of our patrons may already own it), but it is available to patrons only. Crypta Hereticarum is a 20-page sidequest Pathfinder adventure for our ZEITGEIST adventure path, but with some minor changes it works perfectly as a standalone adventure for a party of 6th-level PCs, and we felt that our Patrons might enjoy it. Evil lies trapped within the Crypta Hereticarum ó the Vault of Heresies.

I have some sad news to impart. Mike McArtor, who edited Dragon Magazine, was one of the early Pathfinder designers, and was more recently an editor at WotC for Magic: the Gathering, passed away in a car accident yesterday. Paizo has a nice article about him here. While I never interacted with him, reading about others' memories of him show that he was a much-liked part of the professional Seattle RPG community.

This rather breaks all my rules, in that I'm reporting on politics, and regional politics at that. That said, Gen Con, the hobby's largest American convention, intersects with this particular example, so it's hard to ignore; and this is an RPG news blog, after all. Plus, I agree with the sentiment, even if I'm doubtful about its actual effectiveness given the current contract. Gen Con has written to the local politician in its home city of Indianapolis, USA, threatening (kind of - they're contracted to stay there for five more years whether they like it or not) to consider moving elsewhere if a local law relating to businesses being able to refuse custom to same-sex couples is passed.